The Village of Atlantic Beach, New York, has agreed to rewrite a zoning rule that the Justice Department said treated religious land uses worse than comparable secular ones, the department announced on Wednesday. Under the settlement, the village will drop a requirement that places of worship obtain a special exception permit and will instead allow religious uses as of right in its Residential (A) district.
The department's claims centered on an ordinance that required religious or educational places of assembly, but not nonreligious ones, to obtain a special exception permit from the village's Board of Appeals. The department said that arrangement violated the equal terms provision of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal law that bars zoning authorities from treating religious assemblies and institutions on less than equal terms with nonreligious assemblies or institutions.
"Zoning ordinances that single out religious uses for discretionary zoning permits while allowing secular gathering places as of right violate RLUIPA," said Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general who leads the department's Civil Rights Division. She said the department was committed to ensuring that "religious gathering places like synagogues, churches, and mosques across America are treated the same as secular places of assembly."
The agreement also requires Atlantic Beach to train its officials and employees on the law's requirements and to set up a procedure for receiving and resolving complaints under it, according to the announcement. Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said the statute "prohibits local governments from imposing land use regulations that place unfair or discriminatory barriers on religious groups as compared to secular assemblies." The announcement describes the federal claims as allegations and does not say whether the village admitted any violation.
The department's action follows a private lawsuit by Chabad of the Beaches, an Orthodox Jewish organization, which argued that the village violated the same law when it denied the group's application to use a vacant commercial property for a religious facility. That case was about one building; the federal agreement changes the rule written into the village code.
The dispute began in November 2021, when the Long Beach-based Chabad bought a former Capital One bank branch at 2025 Park Street, by the Atlantic Beach Bridge, for $950,000, Herald Community Newspapers reported. The group planned a community center for Jewish programming, education and worship, along with a drive-through café. The village moved to take the property by eminent domain, and George Pappas, then the mayor, wrote in a letter to residents that if the village reacquired it, the site would become a year-round community center with outdoor recreational space.
The Chabad sued in July 2022, the federal court docket shows. A first settlement in November 2023 would have had the village pay $400,000 over four years and drop its eminent domain case. It unraveled after the village's Board of Zoning Appeals denied all but one of the group's variance requests in October 2024; two months later the Chabad rejected the deal and added the board to its lawsuit, the Herald reported.
The two sides settled again in July 2025, when the village approved a $950,000 agreement at a special meeting. The payments, spread over two years, came to $550,000 more than the earlier deal, and the zoning board was required to grant the variances the Chabad had sought. Brian Stolar, the board's lawyer, said it consented on the condition that there be no admission of liability, according to the Herald. The docket lists the case as terminated on July 29, 2025. On Aug. 20, the zoning board unanimously approved the variances for the community center and café, and Rabbi Eli Goodman of the Chabad said the outcome marked "the beginning of a happy new chapter in the Chabad-Atlantic Beach relationship."
When the village approved the 2025 settlement, many residents questioned whether Atlantic Beach could afford the payments on top of an 87 percent tax increase that year. Village Trustee Barry Frohlinger said the money would come from funds originally budgeted for legal fees and road repaving and that no further increase or use of reserves would be needed, the Herald reported.